I thought it was a bad review, and not because it was negative. It took me 10 minutes to familiarise myself with del.icio.us - initially, I felt the same confusion as the reviewer.
Persistence paid off, though, and it's obvious to me that the reviewer simply didn't persist for long enough. Brian Del Vecchio said: "One conclusion that might be drawn from this is that if the real value of social bookmarking is the wisdom of the crowd, then the size of the crowd is more important than the graphic design--even the interface design." I agree, but that's an inside perspective, which the prospective user doesn't have. Looks are an attractive feature for average users. Del.icio.us is ugly because it's square and grey (sad to say). Some other bookmarking sites are ugly (I think) because they're overwhelmingly cluttered. Furl and Spurl have struck a balance. The review is correct on one thing, though: del.icio.us has a steep learning curve (even if it lasts only a few minutes), with little guidance. That's enough to drive users away. - N _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.del.icio.us/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
